California Rural Legal Assistance

CRLA has 18 offices which serve to meet the legal needs of rural communities from the Mexican border to Northern California.

[2] Since 1966, CRLA provides people with a low income, free legal assistance and a variety of community education and outreach programs.

Major resources are committed to impact litigation, multi-client cases that seek to address the root causes of poverty.

[3] California Rural Legal Assistance was founded in 1966 by James D. Lorenz under the auspices of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty.

Those in attendance included, Cruz Reynoso, Cesar Chavez, Larry Itliong, and CRLA Founder, James D. Lorenz.

[7] Lorenz was featured in a December 15, 1967, Time magazine article that highlighted CRLA's mission to serve California's labourers and rural poor.

CRLA fought the charges and eventually succeeded in getting them dismissed by a Nixon administration-appointed commission of the chief justices of three state supreme courts.

CRLA also won the landmark battle to eliminate the usage of el cortito, the short-handed hoe, a back-breaking tool used by agricultural workers.

Padilla began working at CRLA right out of Berkeley School of Law in 1978 and was promoted from directing attorney of the El Centro office to executive director in 1984.

Padilla is also the first legal aid director to testify before Congress, in this case regarding CRLA's efforts to bring justice to California's dairy workers.

CRLA brought suit against the Reagan administration to prevent cuts in the governor's budget for the California Medicare matching funds.

CRLA fought and won the case, resulting in the restoration of $210 million to the state's Medi-Cal program for the poor and elderly.

[12] In 1972, CRLA helped put a stop to the use of English IQ tests for placing Spanish-speaking children in special education classes.

[4] Because of this case, California law now requires schools to test in a child's native language, so no more students will be incorrectly placed into special education classes due to limited ability to speak English.

[13] CRLA argued in front of the California Supreme Court and succeeded in banning the use of el cortito, the crippling short-handled hoe.

[4][14] Issues brought to light in the 1972 Diana case led to California enacting the Bilingual Education Act, of which CRLA was a major sponsor.

[4] In 1983, CRLA was instrumental in helping pass the Birth Defect Prevention Act in California, which required pesticide companies to test the harmfulness of their products to human beings.

[15] In 1985, CRLA drafted the Special Agricultural Worker provision of the new Immigration, Reform and Control Act (IRCA) that created a new category of permanent residents called "amnesty aliens".

[11] In the 1990 case Lickness et al. v. Kizer et al., CRLA challenged then-Governor George Deukmejian's $24 million cut to state-funded family planning services provided by community health clinics.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to recognize sexual harassment violations in the agricultural industry as a federal agenda item.